“These doodles are my only legacy… each face is mine at the moment of execution, a tentative installment of one interminable self-portrait.”

“I am a cold person, a maniac, a grumpy, hostile, rather mean little man, but I try to hide it by being trite. There are times when I would like to disappear in smoke. I would like to be here to hear and see but not to be seen or attract attention – just to slip into myself.” (Ted Gordon in an interview with John MacGregor, January 1987, Publications de la Collection de l’Art Brut fascicle 16, p.37.)

Ted was abandoned by his mother and raised by his grandparents of Lithuanian descent. His grandmother believed that he was the reincarnation of her brother who had been killed during the First World War and smothered Ted with affection. Ted was fourteen when his father committed suicide after the family business went bankrupt. He had trouble connecting with people around him and felt excluded and marginal. He was a wanderer, going from one job to another. At the age of twenty-six, he moved to San Francisco, California, where he settled after meeting his future wife. He graduated from San Francisco State University and worked for the rest of his life in hospital administration. Since 1986 he and his wife have been living in a nursing home in Laguna Hills.